Colonel Pat Lang's Outpost - "A Committee of Correspondence"

14 April 2011

#Correction to "Prisoners of the mountain" review.

Correction to Prisoner: A sharp-eyed commentor advises me that the principals (if not principles) in this film are Georgian, not Afghan(stani), the war the Chechen not Afghan(stani). Grateful to be set straight, apparently through Wiki-Whatzis, who knew all along. You might be tempted, now, to say “Chechen, Afghan(stani). Yeah, like there’s a difference…” Sadly, they seem to be butchering each other over there on account of just that difference in particularly unfunny fashion. To this dumbo viewer at any rate, who did not spot the authentic history, the altered setting actually adds yet another asset to the film’s considerable charm: it leaves the issues of war, occupation, race, otherness abstract and divorced from time and place (at least for those ignorant of the precise cultural discriminators) and a yet broader comment on those same issues. A very nearly perfect little movie if not a very nearly perfect little review of it. In a related matter, a correction to my review of Citizen Kane: Marilyn Monroe did not discover radium. Alan Farrell

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#Correction to "Prisoners of the mountain" review.

Correction to Prisoner: A sharp-eyed commentor advises me that the principals (if not principles) in this film are Georgian, not Afghan(stani), the war the Chechen not Afghan(stani). Grateful to be set straight, apparently through Wiki-Whatzis, who knew all along. You might be tempted, now, to say “Chechen, Afghan(stani). Yeah, like there’s a difference…” Sadly, they seem to be butchering each other over there on account of just that difference in particularly unfunny fashion. To this dumbo viewer at any rate, who did not spot the authentic history, the altered setting actually adds yet another asset to the film’s considerable charm: it leaves the issues of war, occupation, race, otherness abstract and divorced from time and place (at least for those ignorant of the precise cultural discriminators) and a yet broader comment on those same issues. A very nearly perfect little movie if not a very nearly perfect little review of it. In a related matter, a correction to my review of Citizen Kane: Marilyn Monroe did not discover radium. Alan Farrell